A report, “Electronic Waste: Actions Needed to Provide Assurance That Used Federal Electronics Are Disposed of in an Environmentally Responsible Manner,” released in March from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that federal agencies still have a long way to go in managing their own e-waste responsibly. Interestingly, problems identified in the report are ones that would be addressed by the passage of bi-partisan Congressional e-waste legislation introduced in the House and Senate, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act.
Here are some of the key findings of the report:
10,000 Computers Disposed Weekly
According to the GAO, the U.S. federal government is the world’s largest purchaser of IT equipment, spending $80 billion in FY 2010, and disposing of 10,000 computers each week. The report found that while federal agencies have made some improvements in how they are managing their e-waste, “federal agencies often have little assurance that their used electronics are ultimately disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.”
Floundering Federal Electronics Stewardship
There have been several efforts by the federal government to promote better “stewardship” of used electronics including two executive orders plus voluntary efforts led by the EPA, the GSA, and an inter-agency task force. The GAO goal for this report was to review these efforts and see if they’ve been effective. For its study, the GAO looked at a cross section of five agencies.
What it found is that while there has been some improvement in management of federal e-waste, none of these efforts can assure that federally owned e-waste is being managed responsibly, mostly because the agencies can’t show what’s ultimately happening to their used products.
Source: Environmental Leader
By Barbara Kyle